Places - Grand Hermon (Mount)

«The water we have been hoping for, for such a long time, and that for three days seemed so close, has not yet come and the land is parched. We are lucky to have a spring so near and so rich in water. I have opened the channels. It is a small sigh of relief for the plants which have withering leaves and are covered with dust: just enough to keep them alive. If it would only rain…» Joachim, with the eagerness of all farmers, looks at the sky, while Anne, tired, cools herself with a fan that seems to be made of the dry leaf of a palm interwoven with many-coloured threads keeping it firm.

Anne’s companion interrupts: «Over there, beyond the Great Hermon, fast clouds are arising. There is a northern wind. It will refreshen and perhaps bring rain.»

«The breeze has risen for three days and then it sets when the moon rises. It will do the same again.» Joachim is discouraged.

[...] [They return at home when a storm hits the region, then calms down].

The storm drops suddenly, after one last thunderbolt that is so violent that it throws the three men against the side wall; and in front of the house, in the garden, a black smoky cavity remains as its memory! Meanwhile a cry, one resembling the tiny plea of a little turtle-dove that for the very first time no longer peeps but cooes, is heard from beyond Anne’s door. And at the same time a huge rainbow stretches its semicircle across the sky. It rises, or seems to rise, from the top of Hermon, which kissed by the sun, looks like a most delicate pinkish alabaster: it rises up in the clear September sky and through an atmosphere cleaned of all impurities, it crosses over the hills of Galilee and the plain to the south, and then over another mountain, and seems to rest the other end on the distant horizon, where it drops from view behind a chain of high mountains.

• Defense of the Work
• Places - Grand Hermon (Mount)
• Rainbow

• Creation
• Locations - Esdrelon plain
• Locations - Mont Thabor
• Locations - Mount Carmel
• Locations - Nazareth
• Places - Galileo
• Places - Grand Hermon (Mount)
• Places - Petit Hermon (Mount)
• The Virgin Mary

The top of Mount Hermon is like pink alabaster and is kissed by the sun. Two diamond threads – they look like threads from here – run down from the alabaster top twinkling in an unbelievable fashion in the sun, and disappear into the green woods; they appear once again down in the valley where they form water-courses which flow towards Lake Merom, which cannot be seen from here. They then flow out with the beautiful waters of the Jordan and later drop into the light sapphire sea of Galilee, which twinkles like chips of precious stones set in and lit up by the sun. The sails moving on the lake, calm and splendid in its frame of gardens and wonderful countryside, seem driven by the small light clouds sailing in the sea of the sky.

• Location - Near Lac de Méron
• Locations - Lake Gennesaret - Lake Tiberias - Sea of Galilee
• Places - Grand Hermon (Mount)

Jesus is standing on a rock and is speaking to a large crowd. It is a mountainous place. A lonely hill, between two valleys. The top of the hill is shaped like a yoke, or rather, like a camel’s hump, so that a few yards from the top there is a natural amphitheatre where voices resound clearly as in a well-built concert hall.

The hill is all in flower. It must be summer. The crops down in the plain are beginning to ripen and are getting ready to be cut. The glacier of a high mountain in the north is shining in the sun. Directly below, to the east, the Sea of Galilee looks like a mirror broken into numerous fragments, each of which is a sapphire lit up by the sun. Its blue-gold twinkling is dazzling and it reflects a few fluffy clouds in a very clear sky and the shadow of some swift sails. Beyond the lake of Gennesaret there is a vast extent of plain ground, which because of a light mist near the earth, caused perhaps by evaporation of dew — in fact it must be early morning as the grass on the mountain still has a few dewy diamonds glittering on its stems — looks like a continuation of the lake with an opal-like hue veined with green. Further back there is a chain of mountains, the side of which is so bizarre as to give the impression of clouds sketched on the clear sky.

• Locations - Hattin horns
• Locations - Lake Gennesaret - Lake Tiberias - Sea of Galilee
• Places - Grand Hermon (Mount)